David Roussève/REALITY Halfway to Dawn
The Brooklyn Academy of Music final Next Wave Festival features David Roussève/REALITY
Professor David Roussève is a choreographer, writer, director, and performer. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton and a Guggenheim Fellow. His dance/theater company REALITY has performed throughout the UK, Europe, South America, and the United States. Now, his work Halfway to Dawn, for which he won the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Grant, will have its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's final Next Wave Festival. See more and get tickets here.
"The Brooklyn Academy of Music on Monday unveiled the lineup of the final Next Wave Festival to be overseen by Joseph V. Melillo, the institution’s executive producer and a vital connection to its reputation as a home of cutting-edge music, theater and dance.
Still from Halfway to Dawn Mr. Melillo, who was hired by the visionary BAM leader Harvey Lichtenstein in 1983 and eventually succeeded him, announced in 2017 that he would step down from his leadership role at the end of this year, after more than three decades as a pathbreaking impresario. (Still to come is Mr. Melillo’s final winter-spring season, which will be announced in the fall.)
“The original Next Wave concept, envisioned by Harvey Lichtenstein, remains vital and dynamic,” Mr. Melillo, who was the festival’s founding director, said in a statement. “The season comprises a broad array of wondrous personal expression and unique artistic perspectives.”— Joshua Barone, May 21, 2018
Featured in the festival is the New York Premiere of UCLA Arts professor David Roussève's Halfway to Dawn. Written/choreographed/directed by David Roussève and performed by the wildly diverse nine-member company REALITY, Halfway to Dawn redefines ‘biography’ as the intersection of fact, conjecture, comment, abstraction, and fantasy; as it seeks to uncover the complicated emotional ‘truths’ of gay, African American jazz composer Billy Strayhorn’s life while creating a dialogue on urgent social ‘truths’ of our own. Though instrumental to the creation of the most important body of work in American music history, Strayhorn (1915-1967) remains largely unknown. As Duke Ellington’s main arranger/writing partner, he wrote/co-wrote signatures like “A Train”, “Satin Doll”, and “Lush Life”. But gay, out, and living in Harlem in the 1940’s-60’s, Strayhorn chose to lead a remarkably private life, allowing Ellington to take the spotlight and much of the credit for their joint oeuvre.
Issues of fame, privacy, and creative authorship have never been more resonant than now, when popular culture has redefined fame - not art - as the goal itself, when social media over-sharing has obliterated privacy, and when digital platforms have further blurred the line between composing and arranging. A committed civil rights worker, Strayhorn is a supreme example of artist as activist. Informed by these undercurrents, Halfway to Dawn creates an abstract portrait by layering video-projected text conveying the biographical facts of Strayhorn’s life, projected abstract video art exploring the emotional undercurrents of his journey, and expressionistic physical theater expanding the political urgency of his narrative into our own lives. Moveable screens are surfaces for the projection of historical footage that grounds the work in the Strayhorn era, even while lighting design moves the piece fluidly between past, present, and fantasy.
Read more about Halfway to Dawn.
Read about the Next Wave Festival in the New York Times and Broadway World.
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